Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) that operates the maximum number of high-end multi-axle air conditioned services between Bengaluru and Mangaluru appears bogged down by the increased cost of maintenance—more than the double—of the high-end coaches.
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The culprit is none other than the pathetic condition of Bengaluru-Mangaluru National Highway 75 between Hassan and B.C. Road, particularly about 10 km stretch between Sakleshpur and Maranahalli in Hassan district, aver senior officials. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has been executing four-lane widening work on Hassan-B.C. Road stretch for the last eight years, even as no road exists between Sakleshpur and Maranahalli.
KSRTC operates about 80 high-end buses under brand names Airawat, Airawat Club Class and Ambari Dream Class on the sector, including towards Kundapura and Udupi. While the average cost of maintenance used to be around Rs. 25,000 including consumables per bus a month, it has rose to more than Rs. 50,000 these days because of frequent breakdowns, damage to spare parts etc. Thus, the average monthly maintenance cost that was around ₹15 lakh has now reached ₹31 lakh, officials said.
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The plight of drivers has become miserable as they have to be doubly careful while negotiating the pothole and crater-ridden stretch. Any small deviation while taking a turn would damage the anti-roll bar affecting vehicle’s manoeuvrability. Sometimes, the electronic control unit that controls almost every equipment of the bus, gets damaged entailing an expenditure of nearly ₹3 lakh. Tyre punctures, damage to suspension etc., are frequent. More than all these, passengers were the ones affected severely because of the worst road conditions, the officials said.
Vishnumurthy (name changed), a Club Class driver on the Mangaluru-Bengaluru route on Saturday, November 12, told The Hindu that the travel that got completed in 6-7 hours when the roads were good, takes at least 9 hours with no road on the Maranahalli-Sakleshpur stretch. “You cannot call it a road at all, craters as deep as 2-3 ft every now and then not only damages the bus, but also troubles passengers,” he said.
Why is KSRTC facing trouble?
New buses not introduced
Another senior officer said despite the Bengaluru-Mangaluru sector being one of the highest revenue earning sectors of KSRTC, the Corporation neither replaced aged buses with new ones nor introduced more services. “The route has high potential; yet many passengers have shifted to trains because of the pathetic road condition,” he said.
Life of high-end buses that cost between Rs. 80 lakh and Rs. 1.2 crore, gets drastically reduced when deployed on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru sector causing huge losses to KSRTC.
And this was not the case of just KSRTC, but of thousands of owners of other buses, heavy to very heavy goods vehicles and of course light motor vehicles, who have been suffering losses to the tune of hundreds of crore rupees solely due to the apathy of the NHAI in providing motorable road.